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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29740635">Return to the Force</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/awriterbeyondthewall/pseuds/awriterbeyondthewall'>awriterbeyondthewall</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F, F/M, M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 21:20:52</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,128</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29740635</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/awriterbeyondthewall/pseuds/awriterbeyondthewall</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Hera Leier wakes up in a strange bed in the lower region of Coruscent. She has no memory of the night before, a strange message left on her hand in her own handwriting, and as she discovers taking her racer back to her own apartment, an arrest warrant out for herself. Apparently she broke into the Jedi Temple Museum last night and stole something very important. Now she's on the run trying to decode the messages her past self left her, while evading Capital Police. It doesn't help at newly elected Senator Leia Organa has something to do with everything as well--and anytime a Skywalker is involved, it's always ended badly for Hera Leier.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Return to the Force</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Anakin Skywalker smirked at me. “Hera, you travelled all this way from Tattooine just to say hello?”</p>
<p>The man was the most insufferable when he thought people were fawning over him. “No, Master Jedi, I travelled here to be trained by the Jedi.”</p>
<p>His face dropped.</p>
<p>I squared my shoulders and extended my hand toward his lightsaber, hanging off his hip. It flung into my hand. “Huh,” I said, turning on the deadly weapon. “And I thought you were a master at this.”</p>
<p>The weapon flew out of my hand and back into his. “Where did you learn to do that,” he growled.</p>
<p>I stood at the entrance to the Jedi Temple in Corvus, the height of Jedi power. I’d sold the last of my mothers heirloom jewelry to get this far. It had taken me years. I’d left shortly after they took Anakin. After Anakin had left me, even though he and I both knew that I was force sensitive also. Hell, when we were infants we lobbed rocks at each other using the force. I was only a few years older than him, but his mother and my mother would do laundry at the same time every day.</p>
<p>“There’s a lot of things you can learn if you find the right things to read.”</p>
<p>“You learned how to use the force from books?” He pulled us into the shadow of a pillar.</p>
<p>I shrugged. “Not everything. People along my travels taught me a thing or two.” I frowned</p>
<p>Anakin grabbed my hands. “People like?”</p>
<p>Other Jedi, ones who were just passing through. Count Dooku at one point when I got caught up in a rather dangerous bounty. But I can’t exactly tell a Jedi I learned a few tricks about the dark side.</p>
<p>“And older Jedi. Died a few years back. He met me at the Dvark bar just down from a Jedi temple on Vrak, complete happenstance but he sensed the force in me and we talked the whole night through about the Sith. About the Jedi. About the differences and similarities between the two of them—“</p>
<p>“—the Sith are nothing like the Jedi.”</p>
<p>I shook my head. “Of course, but they were once the same. Regardless, the stranger gave me the push I needed to come back here.”</p>
<p>Good man. Reminded me that I’d gotten lost in the weeds.</p>
<p>“And what is your plan?”</p>
<p>“I need an audience with Master Yoda.”</p>
<p>Anakin gave me a look. “Master Yoda is very busy.”</p>
<p>I felt someone watching us, and suddenly I realized we had an audience. I pulled my hand out of Anakin grip. “Master Obi-Wan, Master Yoda,” I bowed. “It is an honor to meet you. I am Hera Khan, a childhood friend of Anakin’s.”</p>
<p>“Here to say hello then,” Obi-Wan said, weariness in his voice. “Well, Anakin is needed at the Jedi Council, the separatists are riling the outer rim up again.”</p>
<p>“Actually, I’m here to see Master Yoda.”</p>
<p>Yoda tilted his head. “See me, you ask to. Bold is that. Why I ask?”</p>
<p>I needed Yoda alone. “Are you familiar with the Temple of Jannuk, Master Yoda?”</p>
<p>Yoda narrowed his eyes. “Leave us, please.”</p>
<p>Anakin and Obi-Wan glanced between us. I squared my shoulders again and smiled briefly at Anakin. “I’ll see you later, old friend.”</p>
<p>I wouldn’t, once I talked to Yoda….</p>
<p>“Show me.”</p>
<p>As soon as Obi-Wan and Anakin left, I pulled out my lightsaber staff and flicked the switch. Revealing twin lights of red and white. “As you can see,” I said, “I fell through time. When the difference between light and dark were less…stark.”</p>
<p>“I see,” Yoda said, his mind reaching out for mine. “Warn me, you must. Darkness is coming, yes.”</p>
<p>“Please,” I whispered. “Please let me stay and fight with you.”</p>
<p>“The force says you should not be here, Master Khan.”</p>
<p>My throat tightened. I had not been called that in such a long time. “This is my time though. This is when I was born. This is where I am supposed to be—“</p>
<p>“No longer yours, child. Time has taken you. We at the council will not teach you. You know as much as any of us, yes. Better you to go, yes. Let us fail or win, yes.”</p>
<p>You will fail. You will fail so miserably that not even the passage of time will be able to rebuild the Jedi. But you already know that old master, don’t you?</p>
<p>“Yes,” Yoda said, reading my mind. “Now go before our enemies find you.”</p>
<p>But where am I supposed to go? I’ve trained with the Old Republic, first as a Jedi, than a Sith. Now I’m something in between and yet I struggle to fight the darkness, and I struggle to listen to the light. And to go forward scares me. The future…the future is filled with pain and darkness. And beyond that future is the unknown. Something that calls me that I do not wish to follow for it feels too familiar that I dare not hope.</p>
<p>“You came here for sanctuary, but we do not have it. Follow where the force is sending you, Master Khan.”</p>
<p>I nodded.</p>
<p>“Is this the last time I see you?” Yoda asked, a smile on his face.</p>
<p>“I believe,” I said slowly, “it will not be your last, but it will be mine.”</p>
<p>That’s the thing with time, it goes forward and backward with no regard for my linear mind. I bowed to Master Yoda and stowed away my staff once again the folds of my robe. I glanced back the temple, tempted to say goodbye to Anakin and Obi-Wan. This would likely be the last time I saw them as well. Something in the force was pulling me likely twenty years into the future. Possibly further.</p>
<p>Something was calling me.</p>
<p>The last time I answered a call like that, it sent me back in time 500 years.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The stench of vomit woke me up. I opening one eye and moaned. The place was dingy, tiny, and the Taruga that was trying to share this single with me was knocked out cold, his snores filling the space. There was a small window, I pulled down the blind to peak out at Coruscent. There was barely any light outside, this was probably the lower level of the city.</p>
<p>“What the hell did I do last night,” I murmured, fumbling around for my clothes and boots. I was still wearing my shirt, it smelled terrible but it was the best I could do. After a few minutes, I was dressed. I looked back at my late night companion and kicked him. He didn’t move.</p>
<p>The door to his single unit closed behind me and I rolled up my sleeves and turned down the street. Writing on my inner arm caught my attention. My own hand writing.</p>
<p>45. 66. 890 An St</p>
<p>I thought back to the blue uniform in that mans apartment. New Republic security. Probably new. Probably dumb enough to take a strange woman home. Dumb enough to give me the codes to…something.</p>
<p>Something that pre copious amounts of drinking last night, I wasn’t looking for—dammit.</p>
<p>A green medical light flickered up just ahead of me. I swung inside and walked straight up the counter. I put down a few credits.</p>
<p>The nurse looked at me and drawled. “What can I do for you?”</p>
<p>“I need a blood panel done on me. I’m looking for any type of drugs.”</p>
<p>The nurse, her gills constricting in disdain. “Wouldn’t you know if you did drugs?”</p>
<p>“No,” I said. “I can’t remember anything after 9pm last night.”</p>
<p>She narrowed her large eyes at me. “Put your finger there, you’ll feel a small prick.”</p>
<p>I did as she said and winced at the pain. I’d broken probably every bone in my body at this point but needles still caused me the greatest pain.</p>
<p>I waited for the results at the counter. They took about forty five second.</p>
<p>The nurse handed me a sheet of paper. “Thanks,” I said, dropping a few more credits onto the nurses desk. “That’s so you erase any video surveillance of me entering this place. And destroy whatever sample you took.”</p>
<p>The nurse nodded.</p>
<p>I glanced down at the results.</p>
<p>Fuck.</p>
<p>There were drugs in my system.</p>
<p>A special blend of Arothka and Veniusm, typically used in interrogation techniques for people in my line of work.</p>
<p>Someone had drugged me.</p>
<p>That someone was, apparently, me.</p>
<p>My communicator went off. “Hey, Era, are you alive?”</p>
<p>It was my favorite Senator, Leia Organa. I tapped the comms. “Apparently. What can I help you with Senator?”</p>
<p>“You tried to hail me last night around 4am. I left my comms at my desk. The boy has barely slept through the night.”</p>
<p>Ahh, her lovely infant son. The rascal. “Well, not entirely sure why. I apparently drugged myself to forget last night.”</p>
<p>“That bad?”</p>
<p>I started walking to the shuttle deck. I needed to get back to the surface. “Maybe. Maybe not. Still not sure. Any rumblings of villainy?”</p>
<p>Senator Leia Organa laughed. “When isn’t there? This New Republic is harder to contain than a herd of chickens.”</p>
<p>I reached the shuttle port and attempted to glide through customs. As I ran my hand over the chip scanner, the guard rail blinked red and the alarm went off. “Fuck.”</p>
<p>“Era? That you?”</p>
<p>“Yeah,” I said, reaching to switch off comms,”gotta go. I’m wanted for something down here.”</p>
<p>“Era—“</p>
<p>I crunched the comm system in my hand and vaulted over the bars blocking me in. The guard driod’s saw me making a run for it and started shooting. I waved my hand at their attacks and the stun lasers bounced away from me. I spotted my racer docked where I’d last left it.</p>
<p>Reaching the racer, I turned on the light reflecting and slipped into the stream of oncoming traffic, blending into the crowd. Fuck that was close.</p>
<p>I pulled up recent warrants, having the jiggle the slightly beat up screen to my right as it flickered in and out. This racer was over sixty years old. Then I spotted my name.</p>
<p>Era Leier, wanted for questioning in regards to the break in at the Jedi Temple.</p>
<p>Why the fuck would I break into that museum?</p>
<p>I hadn’t touched anything to do with the Jedi in years. Not since Master Yoda sent me packing. Spent years roaming the outer rim of the galaxy, so far away not even the war made it out there. They’d never heard of the Jedi except in myth and legend.</p>
<p>Other darker things were out there, of course.</p>
<p>But that’s what I was hunting, remnants of the force that were mistakes.</p>
<p>Things that were more magic than science. That defied thinking.</p>
<p>I’d only come back here once I heard Darth Vader had died. I couldn’t bear to meet my old friend after he’d turned to the darkside. In death, of course, he was back to my old friend.</p>
<p>“Miss me?”</p>
<p>I nearly jumped out of my racer seat. “Fuck Annie. Don’t you have something better to do than haunt me? What about your newly discovered children? I’m sure your grandchild would love to see you as well.”</p>
<p>Anakin sat next to me in my racer, the spitting image of when he’d last been apart of the light. “They have to ask me for help. You know that. You’re the only one able to constantly be—receiving.” He frowned. “Besides, I sense great darkness around my grandson. I cannot visit him.”</p>
<p>Huh. That’s great news. “This type of darkness, should I warn Leia?”</p>
<p>Anakin frowned. “No, no. He is much like me. Hopefully he chooses a different path.”</p>
<p>I sighed. Another person I had to avoid. “You know sometimes I just want to be done with the mechanisms of the force entirely. It’s constant need for balance…all wrapped around your family. I wonder if the force isn’t trying to kill every Skywalker to make up for the mistake of creating you.”</p>
<p>Anakin frowned again. “You are much too smart for your own good.”</p>
<p>“Annie,” I said, reaching the planets surface and entering in coordinates to my apartment. “I spent years upon years in the World Between Worlds. I know the force better than almost any creature that has ever lived. And I know for all its supposed justness, with sentience comes regret. I have used that to break free of the force.”</p>
<p>“And yet you still do it’s bidding?”</p>
<p>I smiled. “After a hundred years of trying to find my purpose, searching out anomalies in the force and ridding the galaxy of them, well. I’m very, very good at it. But now I get to choose when, or if, I accept that jobs it gives me.”</p>
<p>Anakin raised his eyebrows. “Whatever you say, Era. Still seems to me like you don’t want to get rid of the force in your life.”</p>
<p>I docked at my apartment, a bit lavish than most, with its private landing pad slightly away from the main part of the sprawling planet wide city. “Anakin, if I left the force entirely, then how would I ever see your smiling face?”</p>
<p>He frowned. “You do use me a crutch, Era. I’m not really here. Only a ghost.”</p>
<p>“Only a ghost,” I sighed. “All my best friends are ghosts.”</p>
<p>I jumped out of the racer and purposely didn’t look back inside. I didn’t sense a force ghost anymore—he’d left again. Like they all do.</p>
<p>My apartment was a mess—I mean, it was usually somewhat of a mess, but this madness was unprecedented. The open design left room for large statement pieces of furniture, but my entire life existed in the one giant room. My bed to the far corner, kitchen to the right as you entered, the shining chrome a bit dull from it’s creation nearly five hundred years prior. I’d bought this place when I first joined the Jedi Order during the height of the Old Republic—and through perhaps slightly illegal means, kept this place in my name and out of the reach of squatters ever since….but now, now there was a giant hologram, filled with a glitching me, amidst blood, and a few sparking droids. And my bed which had been built with Naboo wood, it was now burnt. Fuck.</p>
<p>I went to the hologram and pressed play. “Hey,” past me said, “so glad my plan worked to hide out with Joey.”</p>
<p>Ahh, so that was that poor mans name.</p>
<p>“So,” past me said, pointing a blaster behind and shooting, I heard a droid go down hard. “I’m guessing you’re wondering why I drugged us. Why our apartment is a royal mess, and what those lovely numbers are—now, I don’t want to tell you much, I have a feeling the police will be after us from that break in last night at the old Jedi museum, which I’ll neither confirm nor deny I was involved in—but, here’s what you do need to know: First off, fuck the Skywalkers. Second, they’re trying to create a list of force sensitive kids. Third, we cannot, and I mean, we cannot, let them. Understand?”</p>
<p>No shit, past me.</p>
<p>“I’m hoping you’re still following me, but if it wasn’t clear, they’re trying to recreate the process that the old Jedi would use to find them, which is what you happened to steal last night. Those are coordinates to a planet on the outer rim. Go there. I sent a delayed transmission in our ship which you’ll get once you’re close to the planet. I wish I could tell you more…but, well, we’re going against the force, so we’ve gotta choose—“</p>
<p>“Chaos,” I whispered. “We can’t let it know what we’re doing.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Your understanding of the force is fundamentally wrong,” Yoda said as I rummaged through my broken apartment, quickly packing up my gear to travel to the forgotten Jedi planet.</p>
<p>“It’s not wrong,” I said, “the force is not purposely evil, but it is used by people to inflict evil. However, the force is fickle…and it also sometimes wrong. The future fluctuates…and it makes guesses…and quite frankly, even people who think they are using the light…they still use the dark side of the force. Look, Yoda, I’m not saying the Jedi weren’t….its just, when this all began, and when the Jedi Order was at its height, it was about choice—choosing to be selfless, choosing to study, instead, you became soldiers. You kidnapped children…and now, now any force sensitive child is likely to be kidnapped by either the New Republic or the remnants of the Empire.”</p>
<p>“You care about children, why?”</p>
<p>I smirked, stuffing the last bit of ammo in the depths of my bag. “Yoda, my childhood best friend was taken from me from a dessert planet, used as a child soldiers, who turned into a general so overcome with his fear and anger that he doomed the entire galaxy to darkness. All because he was so afraid of losing everyone he loved—and in the end he did lose everything. And me? My mother hid me away from the Jedi, we were constantly fleeing from the Jedi, and from the Sith. I lived in fear when I was a child, and then it didn’t even matter, I still got sucked into the games of the Jedi and the Sith and the Force. But do you know where I learned to be at peace? 1500 years ago, in a time at the height of Tython when there were no light or dark force users, only force users. There was actual…balance. And then…like smoke, I was taken from that world and put into a time in the middle of the Clone Wars…and I met my childhood best friend again but he was different. He was supposedly a Jedi, and I was supposedly, a Jedi. But so so much had changed.”</p>
<p>“I remember, yes, , asked me to teach, you did.”</p>
<p>“I want purpose, Yoda, instead I was given pain.”</p>
<p>“So prevent younglings from learning—“</p>
<p>“No, Yoda, I am preventing the New Republic kidnapping children. I have nothing against people learning the ways of the force when they are old enough to consent. When they have lived a life with their parents—how different would Anakin have been if you had brought his mother with him? He could have known what unconditional love was—“</p>
<p>“We—“</p>
<p>“Never mind, the past cannot be changed. Trust me, I’ve tried.”</p>
<p>Someone knocked on my door.</p>
<p>“Capital Police, Era Leier, open the door.”</p>
<p>I stopped filling my bag—and turned toward the door. Dammit. I loved this place.</p>
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